Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

by Lisa Unger

“Small and hidden is the door that leads inward, and the entrance is barred by countless prejudices, mistaken assumptions, and fears.” CARL JUNG Civilization in Transition

There’s a day, she’d told him. There’s a last, best day. The day when everything is as good as it’s ever going to be. And if you’re not paying attention, you might miss it. It’s the day when you’re healthy, and everyone you love is okay, and maybe the sun is shining, and you’re doing something stupid like making a cup of tea or reading a book on the porch. And there’s a whole list of things you want but don’t have, and that might be what you’re thinking about. And not a single one of them matters. Because everything that’s important is right there. And, Mav, it’s so easy to miss it completely.

Humankind destroys itself with brilliant creativity, but everything comes from mother earth, even technology. There’s nothing more brutally organic than the human mind and all its diabolical inventions.

“Maybe a lot of us, women especially, go through life pleasing people. First we try to be what our parents want us to be,” said Adele, thinking of the place she was in when she met Miller. Unformed in a lot of ways, ripe for the taking. “Then maybe our boyfriends or husbands. Then everyone—social media, our kids, the neighbors. It’s not even conscious all the time. It often takes a moment of reckoning before we ask ourselves, Who am I? What am I doing here? What do I want?” She paused a second,

Sometimes closure is a thing we find within, he’d said. It’s not necessarily given by another person. It can be something we give ourselves. She was all about moving forward now. She

Azores.